Deborah Bloomfield

Figuring out the day length of Earth is more complicated than you might imagine. While on average a day is 24 hours long, throughout the year the planet’s rotation can speed up and slow down, with one of the biggest factors being the drag caused by the Moon as it gets closer and further away […]

A longstanding mystery surrounding the Vitruvian man – yes, that Vitruvian man – has a new solution. The weird part? It comes from inside your mouth. The Renaissance man You know the Vitruvian Man. He’s perhaps second only to the Mona Lisa in terms of iconic imagery in Western history: a notebook sketch of a […]

Scientists had high hopes for the sample of asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe. The actual findings have surpassed those expectations, and the latest one adds to the extraordinary body of knowledge: researchers have found a mineral on Ryugu that shouldn’t be there. The mineral is called djerfisherite, and it has been found […]

While climate change, species extinctions, and increasing carbon dioxide levels might feel like media buzzwords at this point, they all remain very real threats to biodiversity across the globe, and by extension, the future of our planet. Some have even argued that these are warning signs that we are living through a sixth mass extinction. […]

For years, Steven Kilburn had felt uneasy when driving a particular stretch of road between Pikesville, Baltimore, and Frederick, Maryland. It was an uncanny feeling, not based in any solid memory; just an overwhelming sense of wrongness, like he was being watched.  According to Steven, the feeling first started one night while driving home from […]

“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” So sang Lee Greenwood in 1984, and it’s fair to say it was a sentiment shared by almost everyone in the nation. Not so anymore, however – as data from a new Gallup poll has shown a record low of only 58 […]

If you go down to the beach for a spot of rock pooling this summer, just be mindful of exactly which species you might come across. One person in Japan had a very lucky escape when she picked up a cone snail, not realizing that the creature inside the pretty shell had the power to […]

Using the oldest DNA sample from Egypt to date, researchers have extracted and sequenced the entire genome of an adult male who lived in the region between 4,500 to 4,800 years ago, and in doing so have revealed insights into the possible movements of his ancestors. This is not the first time such an effort […]

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun its first-ever collisions of oxygen ions, in the latest attempt to understand the early universe. The LHC is largely famous for its proton-proton collisions, which ultimately led to the discovery of the Higgs boson and the Higgs field responsible for giving mass to elementary particles such as electrons, […]

Grease is the word – at least, it was for Neanderthals living in what is now Germany some 125,000 years ago. New research shows that our extinct cousins collected huge quantities of animal bones at a dedicated “fat factory”, where they intensively processed them to extract bone grease, adding vital nutrients to their diet. It […]

On July 3, 2025, at 3:54 pm ET, the Earth will officially reach its furthest point from the Sun for this year. This is called aphelion. Our planet’s orbit is very close to a circle, but it is not a circle. It’s an ellipse, so the Earth gets closer and farther from the Sun as […]

NASA’s Perseverance rover may have recorded evidence of a triboelectric discharge caused by a dust devil on Mars, according to a team who presented those findings at the 2025 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). If correct, the strength of the discharge is enough to suggest that lightning could be created within Martian dust devils. […]

Archaeologists have found a hymn dating from nearly 3,000 years ago that describes the city of Babylon in glowing terms, praises its people, location, and river. It seems the words struck such a chord with the inhabitants of what was, for a time, the world’s largest city, that they were widely copied so that it […]

Hidden away among the unexplored limestone hills of Cambodia are a series of karst formations. These uncharted caves, sinkholes, and towers have long been home to rare and elusive wildlife, but we’re only just discovering them. Most recently, four new populations of Kamping Poi bent-toed geckos have been discovered and are suspected of being four […]

OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) ChatGPT is surprisingly good at piloting spacecraft, according to a team that trained it to participate in a simulated spaceflight competition, coming in second place. In 2015, Mexican games studio Squad created the surprise hit video game Kerbal Space Program. In the space flight simulation game, you play a group […]

Astronomers have finally found evidence for a proposed mechanism for a special kind of supernova, known as a Type Ia supernova. It was proposed that at least some of them experience a double detonation, and now they have found evidence that this is indeed the case. The Sun will never go supernova; it’s not massive […]

We (hopefully) all know not to leave dogs or children in hot cars, but what about a half-full water bottle? Probably safe, right? Can’t suffocate; can’t get heat exhaustion; can’t catch on fire – no need to worry at all! Wait – okay, scratch that last one. Turns out, that half-finished Evian in your cup […]

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If you look up at the Moon tonight through binoculars or a small telescope, you may be able to see an unusual feature: a giant “X” on the lunar surface. This is known as the Lunar X or Werner X. If you scan your eyes along the terminator line, you may also see a temporary […]

Astronomers have detected an object with an orbit that will take it out of the Solar System, and almost certainly must have come from outside as well. Having recognized it long before it reaches its closest approach to the Sun, we will have months to study it as it brightens. What we already know, however, is […]